Word: mobutuism
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...picture was not always so gloomy. In the early 1970s, after nearly a decade of civil strife, the former Belgian Congo had achieved a measure of political stability under the dictatorship of President Mobutu Sese Seko. More important, the country was recognized as a treasure trove of gold, diamonds, oil, copper and cobalt. Banks rushed to extend credit. They were to rue the day. Notes one foreign banker in Kinshasa: "We did not do our sums properly...
Aside from export setbacks-prices for copper and cobalt dropped sharply-much of the loan money that flowed in was not spent wisely. Among Mobutu's development projects was a huge undertaking to dam the Zaïre River and to build a 1,100-mile-long power line to the Shaba copper-producing region at a total estimated cost of about $1 billion. Eight months after the power was finally turned on in 1981, the current was switched off. Shaba province happens to be self-sufficient in electricity. Says one Western diplomat: "If ever there was a white...
Worse still, corruption percolates through the regime. "It is widely accepted," a U.S. Senate Foreign Relations Committee staff report completed in March noted, "that he [Mobutu] has managed to amass a legendary personal fortune at the nation's expense." Kickbacks are the order of the day, with the President's cronies controlling significant slices of the economy. "It's the greed of a handful at the top that keeps this country in an economic mess," says one Belgian businessman. Complains one of Zaïre's former financial advisers: "We had great hopes, but they...
...secret report he wrote to IMF Managing Director Jacques de Larosiere early last year. In it, Blumenthal describes refusing high officials' requests for bundles of cash of up to $50,000, finding a government payment of $4 million to a Belgian professor who was the guardian of Mobutu's son, and uncovering a discrepancy of $32.6 million between what was supposed to be in the government's bank accounts abroad and the money that was actually there...
While serving as the Times' Nairobi bureau chief, Lamb chronicled eight wars that raged across the continent, involving 15 African nations. He reported on corrupt Zairean president Mobutu, who has enshrined "Mobutuism" as his nation's official philosophy, and on Idi Amin, who for eight years ruled Uganda under a system in which "human flesh was cheaper than beef...